Joe Biden announces when he expects to name VP choice

The presumptive Democratic nominee says he's using a committee to vet his pick.

Apr 22, 2020

Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) speaks about the Coronavirus and the response to it at the Hotel Du Pont in Wilmington, DE.- PHOTOGRAPH BY Michael Brochstein / Echoes Wire/ Barcroft Studios / Future Publishing (Photo credit should read Michael Brochstein / Echoes Wire/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, opened up about his vice-presidential selection process, finally sharing when he expects to name his final choice.

According to CNN, the former VP said he plans to have a team assembled to vet potential candidates by May 1 and then the list of contenders will be narrowed down in July.

“And so we’re probably going to be announcing the setting up of that committee, which we’re doing now, picking the people who have agreed to serve on it. And we’ll be announcing the formation of that probably by, I assume by May 1, we’ll have that done,” Biden said during an appearance on CBS’ “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

He then made an educated “guess” that it would take until “sometime in July” after thorough background checks were completed and they’d narrowed it down “as to who the 1, 2, 3 people are who are in the hunt at that point.”

Much of the heightened focus on Biden’s selection of a running mate comes as a result of his promise that it will be a woman.

“The first and most important quality is someone who, if I were to walk away immediately from the Office for whatever reason that they can be president and the public could look at that person and say she is capable of being President of the United States tomorrow,” he said in the late-night interview.

Recently, he also shared that former president Barack Obama strongly advised him to choose someone who can complement him, who as Biden put it, “has strengths where I have weaknesses.”

The list of suspected prospects includes Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Georgia House speaker Stacey Abrams and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.